of the small peasantry’s blind alley and hopeless position
(hopeless, outside the revolutionary struggle of the prole-
tariat against the entire capitalist system)” (present edition,
Vol. 5, p. 190).
The historic example of the Soviet Union and other social-
ist countries has shown the peasants of the world the advan-
tages of the socialist way of farming; they are coming to
realise that only the establishment of truly popular power
and producers’ co-operatives can rid the peasants of poverty
and exploitation, and assure them of a life of prosperity and
culture. The experience of the U.S.S.R. and the People’s
Democracies has toppled the theories spread by the servants
of the bourgeoisie which say that the peasantry is basically
hostile to socialism. There is now practical proof of the
correctness of the Marxist-Leninist proposition that the
peasant economy must and can be remodelled on socialist
lines, and that the toiling peasants can be successfully
involved in the construction of socialism and communism.
* * *
The bulk of the material contained in the present volume
was first published from 1932 to 1938, in Lenin Miscellanies
XIX, XXXI and XXXII. Seven writings were first publish-
ed in the Fourth Russian edition, among them: remarks
on M. E. Seignouret’s book, Essays on Social and Agricul-
tural Economics; a manuscript containing an analysis of data
from the Agricultural Statistics of France; remarks on
G. Fischer’s The Social Importance of Machinery in Agri-
culture; a manuscript containing extracts from Hand and
Machine Labor; and remarks on E. Jordi’s Electric Motor
in Agriculture.
The publishers have retained Lenin’s arrangement of the
material, his marks in the margin and underlinings in the
text. The underlinings are indicated by type variations:
a single underlining by italics, a double underlining by
s p a c e d i t a l i c s, three lines by heavy Roman type,
and four lines by s p a c e d h e a v y R o m a n t y p e.
A wavy underlining is indicated by heavy italics, if dou-
ble—by s p a c e d h e a v y i t a l i c s.